The COVID-19 pandemic delivered a blow to the entertainment industry that it's never been able to fully recover from. As studios reduced theatrical windows and turned significant portions of their slate into straight-to-streaming releases, audiences became used to staying home for movies they rightly assumed would be in their screens in no time. This resulted in a significant hit to the box office, which led to today, where, aside from a few exceptions, movies outside of the blockbuster bubble (and, often, even those inside it) struggle greatly to find an audience.
Now, it seems the industry has received what appears to be another sign of the changing times. Though a slower box office is expected during Halloween, this past one showed a major financial speed bump. According to The Hollywood Reporter, sales for the whole weekend are estimated to have come in at $49.8 million, making 2025's Halloween weekend the worst one in 2025. Per estimates from Variety, the weekend's top earners were the Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You ($8.1 million) and Black Phone 2 ($8 million).
Yet, an even more worrying record has been broken. Comscore reports (via THR) that, without counting the pandemic, this also marks the worst box office weekend in 31 years. The previous record holder was 1993, which brought in an unadjusted-for-inflation $49.2 million. But the bad news don't stop there, because according to Variety, this weekend closed what marks the worst October in box office history, having brought in what Variety describes as "an abysmal" $425 million.
The previous worst October was 1997's, with a cume of $385 million (unadjusted for inflation). That's particularly worrying, given the multiple would-be blockbusters released this month, including Tron: Ares, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and The Smashing Machine. All of the projects failed to meet expectations, and in the case of Tron, became major financial flops.
Per Variety, three major factors contributed to this disastrous result. First, the fact that there were no new releases; second, that Halloween was on a Friday, which meant families went trick-or-treating rather than go watch a movie; third, that the Major League Baseball championship became the primary source of entertainment for people over the weekend.
Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trend at Comscore, stated (via Variety) the box office needed strong projects to spark it back to life: "The cavalry cannot get here soon enough. The industry is in dire need of a boost [after] this scary-slow World Series-impacted, Halloween-festivity-laden weekend. It's emblematic of what has been a quiet post-summer moviegoing corridor."
Luckily, there are still a number of major releases slated to hit theaters this year. Those include Predator: Badlands (November 7), The Running Man (November 14), Wicked: For Good (November 21), Zootopia 2 (November 26) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (December 19). Many of them are expected to be major players at the box office, particularly the Wicked sequel, Zootopia 2 and Fire and Ash. Hopefully they will be able to reignite the box office.